Make Your Mixed-Media Art Touchable With Textured Mediums

For eons, we’ve accepted that humans have five senses: sight, touch, taste, hearing, and smell. But when I was listening to the radio recently, I heard that scientists believe there are additional senses, including the sense of time (They can just try to prove that one when we’re in the journaling zone, though, can’t they?). While I’m open to respecting the “new” senses, I know for a fact that the five basic senses get me through the day. My favorite? Touch.

It’s hard to resist tracing my fingers across things when I’m out and about: brick walls of the buildings downtown, ferns hanging over baskets, and interesting fabrics that my friends fashionably wear. I’m even known to ask permission to feel people’s dreadlocks, but that’s another story.

Using our sense of touch to connect with the world around us is just one way to better understand it. But our eyes are also capable of appreciating textures, and that’s where Jane “Danger” Davenport comes in. Her newest Art Lesson is Tactile and Textured Mediums, (included in the 2014 Art Lessons compilation!) and in it, she offers 11 mixed media art techniques using different mediums. Use her findings to create textured backgrounds, or add dimension to the main focus of your artwork.

In addition to describing the various textured mediums, Jane suggests creating a journal page (or even an entire journal) dedicated to testing the results of each medium. This way you’ll have an easy reference as you incorporate these mixed-media art techniques into each of your projects. She also advises, “Be aware of what texture mediums may do to your drawing tools. Avoid using gel pens, brush tip markers, and fine technical pens across rough and gritty surfaces.”

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